Rapporteur proposes new type of amendment to circumvent STF – 11/07/2023 – Power

The rapporteur of the LDO (Budget Guidelines Law), deputy Danilo Forte (União Brasil-CE), stated this Tuesday (7) that he intends to create a new type of parliamentary amendment that would be distributed proportionally to the size of the party benches.

A Sheet revealed in October the parliamentarians’ intention to institute what has been called in Congress a leadership amendment.

Forte named the new source of resources “bench amendment by party”. It is not yet included in the LDO’s preliminary report, but the deputy wants to include it in the final opinion.

In practice, this amendment is intended to replace to some extent the old rapporteur’s amendments, in addition to an amount that currently remains with the ministries and is distributed to parliamentarians.

Forte defended the need to create this new amendment and said that “a vacuum” was opened in the Budget with the extinction of the rapporteur’s amendments by the STF (Supreme Federal Court). At the end of 2022, the court declared this type of transfer unconstitutional.

“So, within this, we are creating a new space, a new heading, a new title which is RP5 [código orçamentário que deve identificar a nova emenda]which will house the part of the budget that will be allocated to parliamentary amendments by bench”, said Forte.

After the end of the rapporteur’s amendments, President Lula (PT) negotiated with Congress that around R$9.8 billion from those resources would go to the government ministers’ coffers, but would become a kind of quota for parliamentarians in these portfolios.

According to the rapporteur, there is still no defined value for the new amendment. It is also not clear whether they would be mandatory (mandatory to execute).

“In the same way that there is the individual parliamentarian’s amendment, the bench amendment by state, we will also have the bench amendment by party, which is very important to democratize these parties’ access to the Budget and at the same time to provide more transparency to the budget execution”, he explained.

According to the deputy, each bench would be responsible for dividing the value of these amendments as they see fit. The tendency is for there to be a dispute around this issue because a wing of Parliament resists the idea of ​​further strengthening party leaders.

As anticipated by SheetForte also confirmed the intention to discuss increasing the mandatory nature of commission amendments and the creation of a schedule for payment of amendments.

The quota of amendments proposed by Forte would be proportional to the size of the party bench. The biggest subtitles, like PL and PT, would have more money.

In the assessment of Lula’s assistants, the creation of a calendar for releasing amendments would reduce the room for maneuver for agreements at decisive moments in the plenary of the Chamber and the Senate. Lula would also lose part of his control over funds if Congress approves the creation of the new type of amendments, because the money would come from ministers’ coffers.

This new type of amendment has been thought of by the center after evaluating that the current model gave too much influence to the PT government.

Danilo Forte also stated that it is necessary to hold a debate on the resources of the electoral fund. He said that the forecast of R$900 million placed by the Lula government in the 2024 Budget to finance electoral campaigns is “hypocrisy”. This is because it is a smaller amount than what was allocated to pay for the 2022 elections (R$4.9 billion).

“How is it that now in an election where there are many more candidates for councilor and mayor, you are going to spend much less?”, said the rapporteur.

Such as Sheet showed, party leaders began to reevaluate the plan to approve a new record value for the fund that will finance the 2024 municipal elections. The conversations, which involve members of parties from different political camps, are now moving towards trying to reach an agreement around the value of R$4.9 billion — this is the same level as the fund for last year’s national elections.

“We need to determine where we will get the resources from to guarantee the electoral fund. What we cannot do is boycott the election or say that we are not going to hold an election because there are no resources. We have to find a solution for this and I think the National Congress will find it” , said Forte.